Image by Spencer Tunik
People like making and maintaining human connections; they are what make us who we are. The people we form these connections with become acquaintances and friends; you can have a shared experience with these people that make a valuable addition to your life. If you form a connection like this you mutually advocate each other, this is a positive, active, human connection.
These human connections mean a lot more than the passive brand connections many people have with media products, and which some brands are actively looking to increase without thinking about what value, if any, these passive followings really have.
We don’t just need more people following us, we need more acquaintances and friends, we therefore need to make our brands more human and personable so people form relationships in which they feel they can advocate what we do.
The image above isn’t included for titillation or shock value. Specer Tunik once said of his art that the subjects are pivotal to the work. His work is credible because those involved completely buy into the idea, they advocate it, they are not just a following but working in collaboration with him to produce something startling, special and completely unique. Art.
It never ceases to amaze me when ordinary people get into the spirit of what I’m doing. It’s pivotal to my art.”
Spencer Tunik
People are pivotal to media products. Our products are our art.
Publishing brands are losing their credibility and relevance because audience expectations around forming connections with them have changed. This is due to the proliferation of interpersonal methods of digital communication like email, forums, Facebook and Twitter. The ability to share information with other people in real-time is easier than it ever has been and we maintain regular communications with more people than we ever have done, so why should we listen to what a brand has to say with the same level of interest as a human connection? We shouldn’t and we don’t.
There is still massive value in the media brand as a platform to enable professional content creation but more than ever before it is the personality and human behind the brand operating on the platform in which our audience are interested in and want to form a meaningful connection with. If the opportunity to do that is absent for the audience they don’t buy into it.
To facilitate the audience advocating our brands we must humanise them to the greatest degree possible, the audience should feel they can connect with the people behind the brand and form a connection with us on a human level.